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Today's Story:
It's always a treat to get invited to the Ritzy Ritz Carlton by Mr Ellerton, because he has super powers to waive the jockey parking fees. But apart from that, the quality of food at this fine establishment has always been par excellence, so yes, it IS always a treat to be asked to dine here, and this time at my favourite outlet, Li Yen.
It's that time of the year again, when kiosks spring up in shopping malls, all selling these little cakelets that the Chinese call mooncakes, presumably because they're round. There is a story associated with mooncakes of course, something about the smuggling of secret notes to revolutionaries all over the China to start a revolution. Thank goodness there was no Twitter or SMSes in those days, or we'd be one more delicacy short...afterall, why bother smuggling notes through a mooncake, and risk it being eaten, when you can tweet or send mass sms-es to rally support, regardless of colour. To the uninformed and ignorant, this festival, celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar is more popularly known as the Mid Autumn Festival. Maybe not here in Malaysia, where its a perpetual summer, so maybe we should just call it Mid Perpetual Summer festival.
Speaking of colour, these days mooncakes come in all sorts of colors and flavours, shapes and sizes. So much so, the youth of today might grow up never realising that we used to eat those with lotus paste and egg yolk in our youth. Case in point would be Li Yen's interesting array.... Wasabi Mooncakes, Rose (Roh Say) Mooncakes, Moet & Chandon Mooncakes, and Green Tea Mooncakes, just to name a few.
The wasabi mooncakes. The flavours are rather subtle, and doesn't really hit you like an oncoming train.
The Rose ones are lovely, suprisingly the flavour of the Rose has been captured in the snow skin layer, so you can really taste hints of it. So far, what I liked about them was the fact that they were not sickly sweet.
I think these were green tea snow skin with custard filling. Not my favourite.
The dim sum in Li Yen is excellent as well. It's ...how shall I put it, rather refined. You know how there's dim sum and DIM SUM. As a friend of mine pointed out years ago, dim sum meant to tantalize your heart, with elegant morsels of goodness, not canonball sized siew mais that you can catapult to kill a pig.
Spring Rolls.
Prawn Rolls.
Scallop Cheong Fun. Silky smooth cheong fun that slides down your throat effortlessly.
Lovely siew mais....
But these buns, OMIGOOOOOOOOODNESS, these buns, I WANT MORE BUNS. Frankly, neither the pork ones nor custard buns below looked like anything special. Don't judge a bun by its cover. The dough for the pork one was so light, and moist, and the whole thing just melted in the mouth.
And these custard buns, I thought they looked dry, but boy, have I never been wronger. Seriously good stuff. In fact, I feel like having some now. How?
And finished off with my favourite type of noodle, sang mee with seafood.
[In fancy Brihtish accent], Why, Thank yew Mr Olliver. How kind of yew to let us come.
Quickly head over to Li Yen for their amazing array of mooncakes. The festival is on 12th September, so you have a week more to indulge.
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